


Lemma

by Davechicken



Category: Supernatural
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-26
Updated: 2015-07-26
Packaged: 2018-04-11 08:33:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,033
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4428536
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Davechicken/pseuds/Davechicken
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which: the aftermath of great battles leaves Michael with the time to introspect.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Lemma

**Author's Note:**

  * For [](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts).



Long after it all ended, long after two sets of brothers sent the primordial Darkness back to where it belonged (and who was to say _that_ wasn't the ineffable plan, after all?) Michael and Lucifer met on neutral territory at last. After so many years apart, Michael had forgotten what Lucifer was really like. Radiant and beautiful, he had been. He still was beautiful, but his bright-burning light was fuelled by kindling stacks, throwing ripe-smelling smoke, now. He was no longer a being of distilled light, but of the pit he'd been cast into.

And in the Pit, he had come to know him once more. Come to realise that Lucifer was as much in pain as the creator of it; was as lonely as the souls he warped to his weft. You couldn't make a whole from two broken things, though. No matter how many humans he dragged down to his Hell... the misery had just compounded.

"What will you do now, brother?"

He asked him out here, out in the vastness of beyond. His voice sent storms spinning across a gas giant's swirling surface. 

"I..."

Lucifer faltered. Lucifer had ever been sure of his purpose. Ever been the pole star around which all else rotated. When he fell, everything had slipped sideways... even in Heaven. And now? Now Michael wasn't sure what to make of it. 

"I cannot come back to Heaven."

Michael supposed not.

Nor Hell.

They parted, then. This time it was different. This time it wasn't a horrific act of sundering: casting his beloved brother down to _Sheol_. This time... it was as if they might meet again. As if it was a momentary parting, not an end before the final end.

Michael went back to the Host.

***

Heaven was much changed. Where once (long, long ago) there had been glorious songs of exultation, hosannas in the highest... now the choir was subdued. The song was still there, the sound of the spheres, but muted and with minor keys mingled in the melodies.

The numbers were fewer, too. The human souls far outweighed the angelic ones. If they ever did riot, it would be a difficult fight to call. Although who would rebel against paradise? (Who but the Winchesters, indeed.)

Michael drifted through doorways, floated through dreams, memories, wishes. He saw the world below made shiny and clean above. That was how it was always supposed to be: as above, so below. He watched as people shared their hopes for forever into eternity, and he understood.

He understood, now, what it was. Before this had been abstract, had been a concept in a language he didn't speak. Numbers and letters on a board in chalk. An equation without a purpose. Now, though, he saw the output of profit. He saw the parabola turn into a smile, and the smile had a feeling, not just a shape. It was a movement in his Grace, a bouncing and a bubbling. Strange, how the human form turned feeling into physical more often than not. Their souls were so vibrant, and yet they tethered their essence, their whole understanding of the world to senses that limited them utterly.

There was one Heaven, one paradise, that he lingered above. He did not descend into it where the soul could see him, but he watched from above. 

Adam Milligan. Half Winchester, half not. Raised away from the wolves that paced outside a doorstep, but somehow brought into the fight all the same. Michael had raised his body from dust and ash, had swirled his Grace tight around the lifeless corpse to blink into the world. His soul had been forever absent, which Michael was grateful for. He'd seen the havoc wreaked upon Lucifer's vessel before it was plucked from the pit. He'd not wish that on anyone... not even Lucifer.

Especially not Lucifer.

But it had been his body - this Adam - that he'd puppeteered. That frame had been the one Adam had experienced the world through, and Michael was curious about what sort of person he had been. 

Before... before this all? Humans had barely registered. They were there, and they were part of The Plan. But they existed like cogs in a machine. Turning on and only drawing attention when they snapped out and fell into the dusty floor below. Castiel had taught him a lesson, and now everywhere he went he was _conscious_ of the churning, groaning, squeaking noises of humanity. He felt every soul like a hair on his vessel's skin caught by errant particles. They _itched_.

Adam's own paradise was simple. He had a calm life, one with friends and family. A picnic out in the woods under endless sunlight. A frisbee and a beast which was more wag than dog. The strong scents of foods that made him remember faint traces of _hunger_ and the feel of grass below his fingers and toes. 

Michael watched with a strange longing, feeling a connection to this being who was entirely unaware of his existence. Perhaps he'd read of him, once, in a book. Perhaps he'd heard his name mentioned. He'd never known the lion-fierce warrior-son of God, though. Never witnessed the might and power of God's eldest, his first-born son. 

Dean was supposed to be his. The dutiful boy, forever following in his father's footsteps. Only... neither of them had, really. Neither had outright rebelled, but you couldn't call their behaviour loyal. Not dogged-loyal, anyway. And instead of his Sword, the vessel made for him by long years of careful matchmaking, of winding together the fates of men and women (and the beds of men and women)... he'd had to take this one, instead.

This one, who hadn't even had the chance to say 'yes'. This one, who had long since expired. Whose body was a collection of disintegrated atoms and dislocated bones. Michael lowered himself to the ground of his dream, feeling the tender blades of grass reach out for him like a hand to a lover. He stared back at this one - this _boy_ with a face that looked just like him.

"The... hell?"

Michael smiled, and it was a quiet smile. "We have much to talk about, Adam."


End file.
